Thursday, December 04, 2014

Hentai Game Review - DramaraQuest V

The confusingly named DramaraQuest V is actually the second entry in the DramaraQuest series of games. The reason for V instead of II is because DramaraQuest is a hentai parody of Dragon Quest V. It follows closely the plot of the first third of the latter game, replacing the normal monsters with sexy monster girl equivalents and switching the emphasis of the combat to sex rather than fighting.

DramaraQuest is a battlefuck game. Battles are decided by the combatants attempting to fuck the other into submission. If the player happens to be the one submitting (because their HP is reduced to 0), then the game will offer up an additional sexy Bad End. Outside of the battlefucks it’s the standard JRPG skeleton – you, as the main protagonist, wander through dungeons, villages and the outside world map in search of the trigger events that will advance the story along. If you want a more detailed look I blogged a full playthrough, starting here.

The artwork is good and has a consistent style across the whole game. The monster girls are converted versions of classic monsters from the Dragon Quest series and it’s fun trying to guess what they were originally (with the hammerhood being the most creative transformation). The encounters have some limited animation achieved through simple distortions of the base sprites. This is reasonably effective in some places.

One of DramaraQuest's more imaginative conversions

There are a couple of positives over the previous DramaraQuest game. Rather than abstract portraits/clouds of black smoke, the monster girls are represented on the map as little chibi sprites. Also, while there is some palette swapping to bulk up the monsterpedia, it’s nowhere near as prevalent as it was in the first game. The game has about twenty-odd monster types, with some having variants in hair and skin colour.

On the negative side the battlefucks and Bad Ends are a little generic and bland. There’s not much variety to the monster girls’ attacks and the strategy is very simple. On the plus side, experience progression is fast enough that the player won’t need to resort to grinding to advance further into the game.

Yep, you did see it right. It was a sex toy.

I mentioned above that DramaraQuest V is a porn parody of Dragon Quest V. What I should add is that it is a weirdly accurate following of the Dragon Quest V game. Personally I find it a little odd when named characters are “borrowed” and thrust into porn scenarios. This didn’t trigger for DramaraQuest V as I’m not very familiar with the game it’s based on, but it might for some. If you loved the game in the past it might be a little off to see the innkeeper’s daughter getting up to things the innkeeper definitely wouldn’t approve of.

Or very arousing. Everyone is different in this regard.

Sticking so faithfully to the original also creates a jarring disconnect between the conventional JRPG bits, where a legendary hero is dragging his young son around from place to place, and the battlefuck bits, where the young son suddenly morphs into Casanova++ and bonks the whole countryside into submission. I don’t think the makers needed to follow the plot of the original Dragon Quest V quite so slavishly. Although there’s a possibility I might be missing the point of the whole project here.

Sadly, not many of DramaraQuest's monster girls have additional attacks as detailed as this.

Overall DramaraQuest V is an okay monster girl hentai game without being an exceptional one. The game’s biggest problem is it doesn’t really excel at anything enough to distinguish it from its competitors. The Violated Hero series has prettier art and more imaginative designs. Monster Girl Quest has a much more involved story. ROBF has more complex combat mechanics and handles the battlefucks much better. If you’re on a tight budget, you’re better off checking out those games first. If you already have and are twiddling your thumbs waiting for Mon-musu Quest: Paradoxto come out, then DramaraQuest will at least give you some sexy distractions for a few nights.